A Thousand and One
by Tails for Fairies
Summary: Lucy and Laxus Ship Week: Day Six - Laxus was a monster who needed his game and came to find that he needed her just as much as he needed the cold relief of blood on his fingertips. For, well, that woman had always been his greatest game; greater than even her mother. Lucy was to be his pride and joy, he boasted in the empty expanse of his home. {T, but there is murder}


_**Lucy and Laxus Ship Week: Day Six - Games**_

 _ **{Everything is late because I was sick}**_

* * *

Often Laxus thought that if there were a thousand ways to die then he would kill a person for each method; it was not often that Laxus thought he would get caught for such a thing. But how hard, he wondered, would it be to get away with such a crime? Fairly easy, was the answer. Laxus had been playing the game ever since his father had been thrown from their household, from the 'Guild'. A crude name but Mavis had always thought that 'crime ring' was too harsh a name for their petty quests. Laxus had named this game 'The Final Girl' and Laxus played this game with his friends, who he had lovingly called the 'Thunder God Tribe', more for their first killing than for any particular reason. Their first killing had been of the patrol officer that was skulking about the neighbouring city; Alexandra Olson was a quaint girl, often wore blood red lipstick and took too many cigarette breaks, and she was ready when even the steeliest of 'hard' men keeled over in fear.

But Alexandra never really expected to be tied to a metal pole atop a mountain during a thunderstorm.

Though I waver from the subject! This game, of course, was to kill a thousand people a thousand different ways, and, of course, the thousandth person had to be someone perfect. Someone delectable. And Laxus was working towards her, that glorious woman. Now, despite what the name suggests, not all the victims were of the female persuasion, no as even Laxus knew that that would be far too suspicious in nature. But Laxus had always been insistent that all the victims have blonde hair, just like she had.

The first time he saw the object that sparked his obsession was when he was a child, walking with his grandfather to the bank beside the old mill; the building was made of some carved and almost silver stone, and it seemed as though there were rivers of platinum and black diamond through the interior marble. Laxus had seen the woman there, her body gloved inside a metallic red dress and swathed in a grey and burgundy coat, faux fur at the cuffs to halt the Autumn breeze. This woman - Layla Heartphilia, the teller had named her - had had hair the same colour as his own, though Layla's had seemed less like a static mess of lightning than his it was still a beautiful golden colour.

The woman had a pram with her, a small pink and ugly baby cradled in the recesses of the black nest of silken scarves. Though Laxus had loved that the child had had the same colour hair as Layla, as himself, he had hated that such a creature existed to take up the woman's precious time upon the land. Whilst he hated the creature's existence, he had been thankful that there would be someone for the woman to love before he arrived into her life to sweep her off her feet.

But I, as the responsible being that I am, must remind you that this boy was only in his seventh Autumn when he first made the declaration and that he spent the rest of his life - all the way to his twenty-fifth Autumn - obsessing over the perfect way to commit his final murder on a woman he had never officially met but had none the less claimed as his own. And now I feel I must be honest with you, for I cannot continue anymore without telling you all something that I particularly like about this story; I like how childish Laxus was in this game, for Laxus needed games that made people bleed like others needed air. When Laxus was not playing the game everything was cold and grey and black and white, and quite frankly this scared Laxus. So the red of blood was always welcome to the boy eternal, but mostly what I like is how she was his pride and joy, despite being the sloppiest and most unplanned death he had caused. So desperate in deaths throws was he to have his thousandth kill.

On the eve of their three-hundredth and forty-seventh way to die, the victim (a young screen actor by the name of Victor Cerpith) Laxus uncovered the memorial for the death of Layla Heartphilia. The newspaper was a half-dozen years old, and from that point, Laxus was inconsolable - not that anyone knew the reason why. Even the Thunder God Tribe had been slightly mystified as to why the man dwindled in the number of kills made over the following years, and Makarov was blindingly horrified that his grandson may have finally fallen into madness, as his father had done before him.

This does not necessarily mean that Laxus stopped playing, Gods no, in fact at that time there was a rise in the number of ways to die - though Laxus had planned on using any number of them on his own personage. Some of these unique ways have been forever emblazed on societies collective heart in the forms of popular books and lacrima shows, some even making it into classical plays. Not that Laxus knew of this, for he was long dead by the time the true nature of his crimes were uncovered. That is not to say he did not enjoy certain special investigatory programmes copying the methods of some of his ways to die, no he quite enjoyed watching crime scene units pretend that they knew exactly what had happened to the poor people he had killed but we drift.

Laxus was inconsolable to the death of Layla Heartphilia, though none of his Tribe offered comments on how he dedicated an entire room to her in the many years after the discovery of her death. Laxus had never told them about the mysterious blonde woman who had sparked his obsession, though they knew there was bound to be one, and never offer an explanation for the richly dressed woman in red that he spent hours painting in varies deathly positions. Makarov grew worried about his only grandchild when the Tribe told him of his grandson's actions though never learnt anything beyond that the man was grieving an unknown woman's death. But Laxus had not cared for their worries, instead throwing more of his life into his obsession with the woman named Layla. When that idiot of a mercenary, Natsu Dragneel, had dragged the image of the woman into the Guild one day when he was gone Laxus had almost stolen the girl away, his breath knocked from him as he realised that this was the ugly child wrapped in black satin who had kept Layla company. Laxus had almost, almost approached her once to offer condolences for Layla's death, but had stopped himself when he realised that Lucy would not know him; would not know how much he loved her visage and body; would not know that he had mourned the woman more than he ought to; would not know that Laxus was eternally grateful for her being with Layla when he had not been able to; would not know how thankful Laxus was that there was someone else out there who had loved Layla as much as he. That Layla had been dead for too long.

He stopped when he realised that Layla had been dead for far too long for his condolences to have any meaning.

And Laxus had also been saddened to realise that Lucy would not know how much he craved her death in his bones, how he craved it more than he had Layla's. Laxus learnt to learn Lucy Heartphilia for more than the daughter of his obsession, he learnt that she was everything he had hoped her to be and more, kind to a fault and defiant to any man's order. Laxus learnt that he needed Lucy Heartphilia like a plant needs light and a sky needs a storm; craved her more than he needed air. Laxus learnt to despise Lucy for taking away his love of Layla, and Laxus learnt to love Lucy, for loving him as he had wanted Layla to.

But still it was a game. So when, years later, Lucy lay over him as he lay bleeding to death in the middle of a battlefield, the woman whispering and muttering with a fleeting voice that did not believe the words that it spoke, Laxus reached a hand up and wrapped it around her delicate throat. The man marvelled for a moment at how perfect she looked with his large hand around her neck, and how he craved the beating of her pulse beneath his palm, all the while squeezing until her face turned blue, and had been happy with how he would die with her. A thousand and one ways, Laxus had thought as he smiled a grin full of bloody teeth, and it was then that he whispered his final words to the woman, who was taking her last faltering breaths with doe eyes bulging though she did not struggle much;

"A thousand and one ways to die, Lucy, for I love you more than Layla."


End file.
